Woman who accused Donald Trump of raping her at 13 drops lawsuit

A woman who had accused Donald Trump of raping her when she was a 13-year-old dropped her lawsuit against the Republican nominee on Friday.

One of the accuser’s attorneys, Thomas Meagher, filed a one-page voluntary dismissal in district court in New York late Friday. Neither he nor a second attorney listed immediately responded to questions about the document.

The woman, who had filed suit earlier this year under the pseudonym Jane Doe, had alleged that Trump and billionaire Jeffrey Epstein had raped her in 1994, when she was a 13-year-old aspiring model.

This week she abruptly canceled a plan to speak publicly about the allegations, and another attorney, Lisa Bloom, cited “numerous threats” against her client.“She has been here all day, ready to do it, but unfortunately she is in terrible fear,” Bloom said on Wednesday. Bloom’s mother, Gloria Allred, is an attorney representing several women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct.

Trump had been given a tentative court date for the civil lawsuit of 16 December and has denied all the accusations made against him.

After Doe’s suit was filed in June, Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, told the Guardian the claims were “a complete fabrication”.

“This is basically a sham lawsuit brought by someone who desires to impact the presidential election,” he said.

A virtually identical lawsuit was filed in April in California and dismissed for technical errors. An investigation linked the lawsuits to Norm Lubow, a former television producer with a history of disputed allegations against celebrities. Both suits named Epstein, a financier who was convicted of soliciting sex from an underage girl in 2008.

The court order to Trump and Epstein’s attorneys gave no details of Doe’s complaint, but the original suit alleged that Trump assaulted her at Epstein’s home in Manhattan and at parties hosted by the financier.